Biz & IT —

HD battle on the eastern front? Warner to support CBHD

Warner Bros. has decided that it has had enough of this "one HD format" …

Remember when Blu-ray vanquished HD DVD to become the One True Physical HD Format? Forget about it. China Blue HD (CBHD) is now in the game, at least in the People's Republic. The format got a boost from a Warner Bros. announcement that it plans to support CBHD with a number of its films during the first half of 2009, including Harry Potter titles and Blood Diamond. The studio hopes that its curious decision will extend its reach to more than 70 million Chinese homes by 2011.

The main appeal of CBHD discs and players are that they are cheap to make. OMNERIC, the organization behind CBHD, says that converting a DVD production line to CBHD only costs $800,000, compared to the $3 million (or so) that it would cost to convert to a Blu-ray production plant. Combine that with low licensing fees, and you have discs and players that are more affordable to the typical Chinese customer than Blu-ray.

During the fall of 2008, the CBHD group tried to promote itself among Hollywood movie studios by touting copy protection improvements, but Hollywood was having none of it at the time. It seemed as if the studios were relieved that the HD DVD vs. Blu-ray format war had finally ended and were looking forward to focusing on a single HD format, but that has now changed. According to Warner's Chinese-language announcement, the CBHD discs will be priced between 50 and 70 yuan (roughly $7.25 to $10.15), and player prices will start at about 1,999 yuan ($290 or so).

Warner has been experimenting with cheap DVDs in China for a number of years now. The studio, along with Paramount and even Fox, sells DVDs for between 10 and 25 yuan (about $1.40 to $3.60 at today's conversion rates) in an attempt to compete with pirates—why buy a camcorder or poorly-burned version of a movie from a street vendor when you can get a legit copy for almost the same price? Warner even announced in November of 2008 that it was going to try and compete with pirates by offering movie downloads for under a dollar.

It's no surprise, then, that the next step would be to offer cheap(er) HD movies. The Blu-ray version of Blood Diamond is going for just under $20 here in the US, according to a quick search online, and the CBHD version would be at least half that. The next question is whether any other studios plan to follow in Warner's footsteps—if so, then CBHD might actually have a fighting chance of succeeding, at least in China.

Jacqui Cheng
Jacqui is an Editor at Large at Ars Technica, where she has spent the last eight years writing about Apple culture, gadgets, social networking, privacy, and more. Emailjacqui@arstechnica.com//Twitter@eJacqui

Bluray movies are way to expensive for me. Not to mention if I want to make my own family Bluray movies. Clearly, Sony or BD becomes the monopoly in the consumer HD market. I wonder when the fanfare of antitrust will begin.

Can't find jack about capacity though. Like others, I'd love to be able to burn my own high capacity discs, but the price is going to have to come way down before I do. I can buy a 1TB hard drive for less than half the price of 1TB worth of Blu-Ray discs.

"The main appeal of CBHD discs and players are that they are cheap to make. OMNERIC, the organization behind CBHD, says that converting a DVD production line to CBHD only costs $800,000, compared to the $3 million (or so) that it would cost to convert to a Blu-ray production plant"

CBHD is, basically HD-DVD. It uses the same players with slightly altered software to avoid some patents. Toshiba has been making CBHD out of their HD-DVD players for a while now.

quote:

The reason might be that CBHD would fare better than Blu-Ray against pirated movies in China.

If Warner helps CBHD become successful in China, they are slitting their own throats because they would be putting technology into everyone's home that makes it very easy for pirates to exploit. As the article says, it is easy and cheap to convert a DVD factory into a CBHD factory. Guess who owns most of the DVD factories in China?

Originally posted by sprockkets:Weird. The so called cheaper to manufacture format HD-DVD failed. What makes them think this will succeed?

Sure Bluray's more expensive to license and manufacture, is encumbered with extra layers of DRM, runs on a slow virtual machine, was released with an incomplete spec that was incompatible with the completed one...but hey, who cares, it's got 50GB! Ya, we're soooooo much better off that Bluray won...

CBHD used to be called CH-DVD, and is closely related to HD-DVD. I suspect the new name is a play on Blu-ray. CH-DVD inherits HD-DVD's 15GB capacity, but uses its own audio and video codec, called AVS.

AVS uses technologies that the Chinese licensed directly from international patent holders rather than licensing them through the MPEG licensing authority, hence the lower licensing fees compared to MPEG 2 and AVC.

WOW regular dvds for about $1.40 to $3.60 at today's conversion rates. HD DVDs for roughly $7.25 to $10.15. It certainly pays to be the #1 pirated sofware/movie country in the world. Apparent the U.S. is slacking and needs to get on the ball. Don't worry Hollywood, Americans aren't stupid, we can learn the lesson that pirating movies will drive down prices. Just keep giving us the incentive and I am sure we can catch up.

Philippe23 got it right in the third post. This is Warner's way of giving the Chinese the affordable Western movies they want, without having to worry about importers or counterfeiters undermining their first world markets. It's like Microsoft selling Windows Starter Edition super cheap in third world markets, but not in the US.

t_newt:

quote:

If Warner helps CBHD become successful in China, they are slitting their own throats because they would be putting technology into everyone's home that makes it very easy for pirates to exploit. As the article says, it is easy and cheap to convert a DVD factory into a CBHD factory. Guess who owns most of the DVD factories in China?

The Chinese government has been pushing their homegrown AV standards for years now, trying to get out from under stiff US and Japanese licensing fees. I imagine that to a certain extent this is Warner throwing a bone to the Chinese government, with the implicit threat that if they let the pirates get out of hand with the new format, they'll yank support and leave the Chinese government looking bad.

"Regardless, optical disks are dead."Not really. Streamed and downloaded movies don't even come close to BD quality. Also, if downloaded movies are encumbered with DRM, they are impossible to loan to friends (forget about streamed video).

Originally posted by rays username:So if I threaten to download movies, among other things, will the industry cater to me and sell me reasonably priced discs?

No, if you're a poor third world country who can't afford reasonably priced discs in the first place, then maybe they'll sell you discs you can afford, as long as there's no way for you to turn them around for quick buck by selling them back to the first world.

It proves quite clearly that they make a ridiculous amount in the first world. They're willing to do some damage to their economies of scale (even if it costs less to convert TO CBHD, they're still converting) to try to limit the pirated discs coming across. I wonder what the profit margins on BD are?

It will be very difficult.Street vendors have already built up a very strong channel for videos.No pirated support, no channel.PC games used to reduce the price under pirated discs in China. But the street channel refused selling them.

It proves quite clearly that they make a ridiculous amount in the first world.

Sure. Google up Levis' trademark suit against people importing genuine Levis jeans from Turkey to sell in Europe, because the same jeans are priced to meet the market - which in Turkey is cheap, cheap, cheap.

Levis won, of course. Remember, globalisation is for driving down your wages, not for you to get a better deal.

Originally posted by hestermofet:"Regardless, optical disks are dead."Not really. Streamed and downloaded movies don't even come close to BD quality.

Have you noticed that most people don't care? If they did, the market for $1 handheld-camera bootlegs wouldn't exist. Nor would YouTube. Meanwhile, I don't know a single friend with a BD player.

While I'll will absolutely give you "most", your anecdotal statistic is pretty worthless, as is mine: I personally know at least 15 people with blu-ray players who are actively buying movies, probably 1 in 4 or 5 of my social/work circle.

BD may or may not ever reach DVD sales volumes (I'd lean towards not), but it is going to remain as an enthusiast format at the very least with a lot more sales than Laserdisc ever had. And it may do better than that if they get creative with the content they put on it, or do something about the pricing of the discs as a data format.

720p with 5.1 (about what Apple's "HD" offerings are) has noticeable artifacts compared to a blu-ray on anything bigger than a 50" screen. Not bad, and it's completely worth the price difference and convenience compared to buying a a BD, as iTunes is my preferred method for renting movies, but for a title I buy, it's going to be a BD.

There is a decent sized hard-core demographic who will purchase BD, and will flame a studio for anything less than an artifact free transfer with a maxed bitrate and lossless high bitrate audio. They are the ones paying $20+ for these titles. And streamed/DLed movies don't cut it for them.

So "the market" is not the monolithic entity you argue it to be.

EDIT: I'd add a bunch of them live in your neck of the woods, as the long winters seem to predispose Canadians towards investing in HT equipment.